The Canadian Soccer Association today announced the format for the 2019 Voyageurs Cup, to determine the Canadian club soccer champion. Played in its current form since 2008, the Voyageurs Cup is a simple cup-style competition, well-known to soccer fans the world over. Two teams play, the winner goes on. Sure there are wrinkles with seedings, number of legs or away goals or penalty shootouts or whatever but everyone, everywhere understands what a cup competition looks like.

Below I reproduce the actual, no-kidding, this-is-actually-what-they-made graphic the Canadian Soccer Association put out to explain how the 2019 Voyageurs Cup is going to work.

Canada Soccer

Perhaps I should explain.

In round one we have the two officially-sanctioned representatives of Canada’s huge amateur club soccer community: League1 Ontario champions Vaughan Azzurri and Première ligue de soccer du Québec champions AS Blainville. Players are not paid at this level, though it is elite soccer taken seriously. Most would say that L1O and PLSQ set the highest standard of Canadian amateur play, but not everybody. Their teams don’t enter the national amateur championship and we have no way of measuring this so it’s an arbitrary, but fairly well-agreed-upon, cut-off. (This will be important later.) We then add four teams from the new Canadian Premier League to get a six-team first round. This pool will be drawn into three home-and-away two-legged ties, with Vaughan and Blainville prevented from meeting each other. The winners advance to the second round.

The other three Canadian Premier League teams (FC Edmonton, Forge FC, and Valour FC) are seeded directly into the second round. As the Canadian Premier League has never played, this is based on the dates these three teams were registered with the Canadian Soccer Association; Edmonton goes all the way back to 2010 as an organization, while Forge and Valour were the first two Premier League teams announced. This may seem like a weak reason for seeding a team, but whatever: they skip a round of competition and face the three winners from the first round in three more two-legged ties.

Those winners advance to the quarterfinal, where they meet two MLS teams (Montreal Impact and the Vancouver Whitecaps) as well as, for some reason, the Ottawa Fury. The Fury, memorably, have refused to join the Canadian Premier League and threatened to sue CONCACAF when they tried to step in. As a professional organization they are younger than FC Edmonton which, by the second-round logic, should seed them behind the Eddies. But, as a direct reward for their anti-social behaviour, they get ahead of the Canadian Premier League teams. Well, if you can swallow Valour FC being seeded ahead of Cavalry I guess you can swallow that.

Anyway, three more two-legged ties ensue, and the winners get into a semi-final with Toronto FC, the defending Voyageurs Cup champions, and finally our cup competition looks a bit real.

I am not enamoured of this format. However, working one out is not easy, and though obviously this is finalized and will not be changed, I didn’t want to spit invective without coming up with a better solution. So here it is. (Click for a larger version.)

The best feature of this bracket is that I don’t need to tell you how it works.

To keep costs low for the little guys the bracket is divided into western and eastern halves. Fortunately, since western Canada produced both the winner of Canada’s national amateur championship, the Challenge Cup (BC Tigers, out of Surrey) and the uncontested best Canadian team in USL PDL (Calgary Foothills, who actually won the whole thing) balancing the bracket is trivial. This format is not likely to work in 2020, but with the probability of more Canadian Premier League teams in year two it was broken anyway. A systematic solution is probably, at this stage, impossible, except “throw everyone who isn’t an MLS team into a pot and let them sort out the last semi-final spot,” which would work for a year or two but is not an ideal long-term answer, and “throw everyone into a pot period,” which the MLS teams would virtually veto.

I anticipate questions from the crowd.

I was looking forward to seeing a distant team! AS Blainville at Pacific FC, what fun!

That would be neat. Sorry to disappoint. In a radical departure from Maple Leaf Forever! practice I have attempted to make life easy for the clubs involved, especially now that we’re introducing two more teams of local amateurs. For me, in “magic of the cup” terms this is balanced out by at least one amateur team being guaranteed a glory game against an MLS side.

What about the Ottawa Fury?

Fuck ’em.

No, what about the Ottawa Fury? They have fans, they’re definitely going to be competitive with CanPL, they got sanctioned for 2019. How do we deal with the Ottawa Fury?

Go play the US Open Cup.

If we needed the Fury as an “odd team” in the east to balance out the bracket, sure, we could include them. But we don’t. Between three Canadian Premier League teams, two MLS teams, the League1 Ontario champions, and the PLSQ champions, eastern Canada is fully subscribed.

They knew from day one that the Canadian Premier League was coming. They helped kill the NASL (and jeopardized FC Edmonton in the process) and got an exemption to Canadian soccer rules banning first teams from the USL. They then said “we prefer the American system, thanks” when called upon to pull with the rest of the country. Nobody in Canadian soccer should be lifting a finger to whisk a mosquito from the Ottawa Fury’s face. They never should have been sanctioned in the first place, they were, we have to live with it, but just because they’re in the family doesn’t mean we invite them to our wedding.

The Fury would contribute to the value of the games, if nothing else. That could get them the Voyageurs Cup if it improved the competition, but when you sit down to draw some brackets they actually cause a lot of inconvenience. So bye-bye.

Fuck ’em. You can’t shit on Canadian soccer, then expect the country to move heaven and earth for your sake. The current format, besides being a joke from a soccer perspective, is one more humiliation the Canadian Soccer Association has heaped on its own balding head.

Surely the Ottawa Fury would sue to get into the Voyageurs Cup!

Is there a legal right for any soccer club in the Dominion to play the Voyageurs Cup if they want to? I think TSS Rovers and the Thunder Bay Chill would be very interested to hear about that.

Do you really, under Canadian law or FIFA statute, get to pick-and-choose at your sole discretion which parts of a nation’s soccer pyramid you want to be a member of? Under the letter of the regulations the Fury shouldn’t be operating in USL at all, but they’re getting away with it because CONCACAF and the CSA didn’t want to fight them over it. I’m not sure how many insults this country is expected to absorb from them before daring them to make their case; the answer from authority and a few fans appears to be “an infinite number.”

The Canadian Soccer Association already prohibits USL League Two teams from entering, though some would like to. They admit amateur teams from the PLSQ or League1 Ontario, but not the Alberta Major Soccer League or any other, older, well-established circuit. This is an accepted part of making the competition work, and while many fans would like to see the whole nation’s soccer community invited to a truly open Voyageurs Cup, it’s not and nobody suggests that’s anything worse than “unfortunate.”

When we have an open Cup in a few years, and the Fury are still in USL, let them enter in the first round of qualifying and try their luck. If through some miracle the Fury stop holding their breath until they turn blue and enter CanPL then all is instantly forgiven and whatever changes are needed to get them in should be made. Either way they will doubtless go far, but they’ll do so on their own merits without hurting the community. For now, let’s limit the Canada’s soccer championship to teams that want to play Canadian soccer as well as, for the foreseeable future, the three MLS clubs that are so much better and better-supported that they should be humoured for the sake of the competition.

Would the MLS teams raise hell?

In the actual 2019 Voyageurs Cup format, one MLS team (defending champion Toronto) is seeded straight to the semi-final and two start in the quarters. In my proposed format, two MLS teams are seeded to the quarters and Montreal enters in the round of 12.

Toronto and Montreal lose out, and could kick up a fuss. It would probably be worth meeting them halfway here; “you enter in the quarterfinals but we make them one-leg ties instead of two-leggers.” The US Open Cup is single-leg. It’s not ideal but, if push came to shove, it would be the best of bad options. One likes to think the MLS teams would be sufficiently interested in such a tournament to play an extra round; one should also be prepared for the reverse.

The Montreal Impact are seeded lower because they had a worse record than the Whitecaps last year. It was only one point worse, with MLS’s unbalanced schedule you cannot possibly say “the Impact were definitely worse than Vancouver,” but unlike the CSA’s idea of seeding at least it’s something that happened on the field. Besides, to be blunt, the Montreal Impact’s second eleven should not have a problem with AS Blainville. Put reserves who could use a game anyway and some academy kids out for two and a half hours. So you have to postpone a USSDA match, oh well. This should not be a problem.

As a strict hypothetical, let’s say Joey Saputo behaves irrationally and refuses to play one extra tie compared to his MLS rivals. Duane Rollins says that seeding all three MLS teams into the semi-finals was a possibility. That MLS-centric solution would still be better than the format we’ve got. It’s not very fair, but is it any less fair than seeding a USL team into the quarters for fun, or putting three CanPL teams a round ahead when nobody’s played a game yet? Having Blainville and Vaughan play each other for the right to join the CanPL teams in a round of eight, with the winner of that joining Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto, wouldn’t be a long-term solution, but none of this is.

A lot of Calgary Foothills’ lineup is joining Cavalry. Having Foothills play based on their 2018 performance when the heart of the 2018 team is gone would be silly.

And the Ottawa Fury have cut two-thirds of their 2018 team but nobody’s saying “they might be terrible, they should have to play Blainville to qualify.”

The Foothills won the 2018 USL PDL, are currently scheduled to enter the 2019 USL League 2, and earned their spot by kicking the hell out of everybody else in their league. If you (or Foothills themselves) really see this as a one-time-exception sort of situation then give their spot to the second-best Canadian team in PDL last year, and the only team anywhere that beat Foothills at all, TSS FC Rovers. Believe me, they’d take it.

The BC Tigers guys have jobs, the PDL players have school, could they really…

This was scary in the old days when, if we had an open Voyageurs Cup and Sam Lam accidentally scored on Chris Konopka in the 90th minute at Clarke Stadium, his Edmonton Scottish teammates would suddenly have to fly to Toronto next Wednesday. Thankfully, with CanPL we have enough teams in the competition that you need two upsets before you have to take a week off work. BC Tigers, Foothills, Blainville, and Vaughan can all take transit to their first-round opponent and, at worst, charter a bus to the second. That’s not unreasonable, American teams do it all the time, and any serious soccer player would jump at the opportunity.

Ben, this is Mr. Canadian Soccer Association. Thank you for the thoughtful article. For reasons which cannot be publicly disclosed we absolutely cannot just tell the Ottawa Fury to, how did you put it, “go play the US Open Cup.” They must be included and this cannot be negotiated. How would you deal with this?

If you have to, if you have to, let the Fury have Calgary Foothills’ spot. Given what they’re putting us through the least they can do is eat the cost of a trip to Spruce Meadows. But my way is better. And anything is better than seeding the Fury ahead of the Canadian Premier League. You’re casting a massive aspersion on your new first division and it hasn’t even started playing yet.

EDIT, 15:52 PM: the first-posted version of this article unforgivably and falsely stated that the two higher MLS teams would enter in the semi-final of my proposed format. In fact they enter in the quarter-final. Thanks to Massimo Cusano via Twitter for correcting this.

In October 2016 the Ottawa Fury, then of the North American Soccer League, announced they would move to the United Soccer League for the 2017 season. There was some drama.

At the time it had been the Canadian Soccer Association’s avowed policy not to permit teams in what was then called “USL Pro.” The Victoria Highlanders had once been interested, but the CSA was not and the Highlanders wound up folding out of USL PDL for a couple seasons. Exceptions were made for MLS reserve teams in Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto, but, as the CSA had said at the time, that was different than opening another level of the American soccer pyramid for independent Canadian franchises.

The United Soccer League was then sanctioned in the United States as a third division league, below the NASL and Major League Soccer. Ottawa already had access to a domestic third division: League1 Ontario, also rated below the NASL and MLS. Of course these sanctioning “tiers” are fake news and nobody pretended L1O teams were as good as USL ones, but if the NASL was too rich for the Fury’s blood there was another option, one which fit with the CSA’s official goal to build Canadian leagues rather than American ones.

The reason for the Fury move was nakedly financial. The team, like many in the NASL, lost millions of dollars a year. In USL, as Fury president John Pugh stated quite frankly, he’d be able to send his team by bus rather than plane more often while somewhat cutting his wage bill. Later the bill was slashed further by having the Fury serve as reserve squad to the MLS Montreal Impact, giving him a few free players and a marquee home friendly every season. Seems like good business, though the team’s average attendance has declined year on year since leaving the NASL.

Ottawa could never have brought their team, whole, into League1 Ontario: it would have run away with the league if they had. Their budget, even trimmed, would be way out of line with the competition. Fans would have left and Canadian players would have lost jobs. Most importantly, the Canadian Premier League was imminent. In October 2016 Paul Beirne was picking out furniture for his new office. Surely the most important thing was to keep the Fury going on their terms, to keep the organization running until they could come back into the fold.

So the CSA made an exception.

The Fury’s move didn’t come without a cost for the rest of Canada. It was one of many cuts that led to the NASL suspending operations for the 2018 season, costing us a year of FC Edmonton first team action and leaving talented Canadians like Ben Fisk and Adam Straith to wander the byways of Europe. Nik Ledgerwood, Tyson Farago, and Nathan Ingham had to drop down to PDL, Marko Aleksic and Allan Zebie are out of the pro game altogether. If the Fury had remained in the league then the NASL would have had the vital six teams for 2018 even had North Carolina and Indy both still defected. This was not unforeseeable: any NASL fan will remember the handwringing about getting enough teams for 2017. Still, the most important thing was to keep the Fury operating, and the rest of the chips would fall where they may. The Fury did what they thought was good for their bottom line and the CSA went along.

Now, the Fury have announced that, even though the Canadian Premier League is kicking off for the 2019 season, they will remain in the United Soccer League. There’s all sorts of speculation why: they’re probably over the future CanPL salary cap, they have a roster that they well might want to bring in en bloc against expansion-team competition, and as a Montreal Impact reserve team they’ll come into conflict with a league that absolutely steadfastly wants nothing of the kind. Some of the Fury’s arguments are probably pretty good. But what’s important is that, once again, the Fury want an exemption because they think it’ll be good for their business.

Unquestionably, the Fury have been very good to Canadian soccer the past couple seasons. They give over a dozen Canadians regular USL minutes, many of whom are decent talents who needed an opportunity and are getting it. Without the Fury Carl Haworth would never have had a pro career, but today he’s the team captain and a one-time senior international. Callum Irving needs to be playing pro. Maxim Tissot needs to be playing pro. Julian de Guzman should be involved in the game here, and not “giving two-weekend youth camps for $500 a man” involved. Thanks to the Fury, they are.

But no team can ever do as much for Canadian soccer as an entire league. It’s a mathematical impossibility. The Vancouver Whitecaps play two or three Canadians a week: even seven teams as unpatriotic as that add up to more Canadian content than the laws of the game would permit the Fury to field. In CanPL, with generous domestic content rules, the Fury won’t even look exceptional in 2019. And if their playing USL jeopardizes the Canadian Premier League, then regardless of what they’ve done in the past or might do in the future, for the good of the nation they should be stopped.

This isn’t just about “team eight” in the 2019 CanPL season. Let’s assume that ship has sailed. But if the CSA permits the Fury to remain in USL then every time CanPL totters (and it will), every time a potential owner is counting the pennies and deciding whether this soccer lark is worth his millions, every time a current owner is debating how to wring his budget a little thinner, he’ll look south across the border and say “why can’t I just join the United Soccer League, like Ottawa?” There’ll be no good answer. On what grounds could the CSA allow the Fury but refuse a fleeing Forge? What judge would allow it if they tried?

The Ottawa Fury’s intentions may be the best in the world but it doesn’t matter: willingly or otherwise, they are directly competing against the league that is Canada’s number one men’s soccer must-have. Until the CanPL can offer as many short-range road trips with as many established teams and as many high-profile players as USL—and that will be many years from now, if ever—it will never clearly outperform USL as an investment opportunity, especially in Ontario and Quebec. And no players, no team, nothing in Canadian men’s soccer, is worth risking CanPL’s future for.

The Fury’s permission to play USL is conditional, up for renewal every year. The Canadian Soccer Association has every right to revoke that permission for the good of the game. They already revoked sanctioning from the so-called “Canadian” Soccer League, an Ontario-based semi-pro circuit, for rampant match fixing. The CSL still operates, and players you’ve heard of have laced up in it, but only well into effective retirement as joining a non-sanctioned outlaw league spells the end of your international career. The USL is unlikely to court trouble from FIFA by condoning an outlaw Fury, and even if they did players with any ambition would flee in droves. In short, the CSA could get the Fury out of USL any time they wanted, and if the Fury wanted to stay in business in CanPL afterwards, that would be up to them.

It is a power the Canadian Soccer Association should use. Ottawa Fury fans are good, loyal people, who have put up with a usually-mediocre team with smiles and energy. Their team has done prodigies for Canadian talent, and their supporters are justly proud. But do we want Canada to be one vast American branch plant or don’t we? When Ottawa joins a happy, healthy Canadian Premier League, the rest of the country will be overjoyed to see them again.

To the Canadian this is a mixed blessing. Should we get an automatic spot Canada’s players will probably be humiliated, because after thirty years getting worse at men’s soccer there’s no sign we’ll be any better in the next nine. Our men’s U-20s, who will be in their primes in 2026, just got the everloving hell beat out of them at the CONCACAF championships. On the other hand, to play is to have a chance. Eddy Berdusco scored against Brazil once. Richard Hastings scored the golden goal against Mexico. Anyway even in defeat it would be a hell of an experience.

There’s the overhyped development angle. Mythology says that, after the ill-fated NASL, the 1994 World Cup kickstarted professional soccer in the United States. Well, in 1993 the Americans had 43 professional soccer clubs between the fully-professional APSL and the weird-hybrid USISL. By an equally generous count Canada has five. 2026 is a long way away, but unless there’s a revolution comparing ourselves to the 1993 Americans is honestly embarrassing. The generation which grew up in the shadow of Canada’s success at the 1986 World Cup happens to be the current one; it is vile.

Hosting ten games worth of World Cup couldn’t hurt of course. If the Canadian Premier League is limping along, maybe it’ll even be the vital shot in the arm, but for the money surely to Christ we could do a lot more. Because that’s the only real objection to this plan: money.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Canada could host ten games tomorrow. Shove teams into BC Place, Olympic Stadium, Commonwealth Stadium, even SkyDome if Toronto isn’t busy with the North American synchronized diving championships. Buy new artificial turf maybe, but all those buildings meet structural requirements and are in cities that have trains, airports, and hotels. Sell ’em out for Belgium – Botswana, it’ll look respectable, total cost six bucks. This is more-or-less what we did for the 2015 Women’s World Cup and that was great!

But that’s bullshit, we both know it, it absolutely does have to be that way. Abby Wambach and Sydney Leroux were wrong that artificial turf is a misogynist plot but right that it is impossible in any sense but the physical for a first world country to host the men’s World Cup so efficiently. For 2015 Canada’s only hosting competition was Zimbabwe and even they dropped out. In 2026 we’ll face a lot worse, including comparisons between us and the Americans with their trillion-dollar taxpayer-subsidized gold-plated NFL palaces. If Canada cheaps out we’ll look second-class before the world next to the Americans. It is inconceivable that FIFA would approve us hosting our games on artificial turf in CFL-calibre stadiums, but equally inconceivable that our governments would have the strength of character to let us.

Can you honestly imagine FIFA, or the Canadian government, letting a billion people watch a World Cup game at SkyDome? On artificial turf? Cathal Kelly’s head would burst like an balloon full of blood. We’re going to have to build, or rebuild, everything. None of our existing facilities, save Commonwealth Stadium, are even theoretically capable of taking real grass, which you can bet your life will be a requirement. Even a token role in this tournament is going to cost a fortune.

2026 is a long way off and even if the World Cup doesn’t happen we’ll have something new by then. No doubt paid for by irresponsible public servants capitulating to pro sports owners, like the already-crumbling new Winnipeg Blue Bombers stadium. But that is no reason to invite even more expensive mistakes for the sake of an eighth of a World Cup.

With 48 teams playing between three countries, disconnected bureaucracies, and participating regions not known for probity, the opportunities for graft will be colossal. Maybe no single event in the history of the First World will give as many opportunities to the crook. Huge “public works” not meant for much more than looking pretty for a month, spread out between ridings. The semi-legal embezzlement of environmental impact statements, First Nations consultations, economic benefit analyses, that already put insiders’ kids through university. The knowledge that, whatever happens, we daren’t look like the poor cousins, and that the chequebook always has one more page.

I am a great soccer fan. The Canadian men have never made the World Cup in my lifetime and to experience that, even on television, would be the sort of sports pleasure I can barely imagine. Moreover there ain’t nothing wrong with taking it through a host’s spot in an inflated tournament. They don’t ask how, just how many. But none of that justifies me asking that the 99.99% of this country that doesn’t care about Canadian soccer be compelled under threat of force to pay enormous sums for my hobby.

Even if you don’t think maybe Canadians should keep their own money, surely (to pick one of a thousand examples) a Toronto downtown relief subway line would be cheaper, generate more jobs, help more people, and have more benefits than 12.5% of a soccer tournament, and I don’t even live in Toronto. Compare it to what proponents will call the “once-in-a-lifetime” chance to host part of a World Cup, though at age 30 I’ve seen four World Cups we hosted by ourselves. It could be justified if all we needed was to repaint what we’ve already paid for, as in 2015, or if it was a self-confident country in a spirit of vigour and celebration splurging on a luxury, and here I can’t help but cite the Montréal Olympics though even they went pearshaped. Neither describes Canadians spending billions of dollars to play third fiddle to Mexico and the United States, as if we didn’t live that every day for nothing.

Today the Canadian Soccer Association announced that it has “released” long-time technical staffer Tony Fonseca. The statement is so brief it can profitably be quoted in full:

Canada Soccer announced today that it has released Director, High Performance, Tony Fonseca effective immediately.

Fonseca joined Canada Soccer in 2006 on an interim basis as an Assistant Coach with the Men’s National Team before becoming a full-time staff coach including responsibility as Head Coach with the Men’s U-20 and U-23 Teams in 2008. He was named Director, High Performance for the Men’s National Team Program in 2011 and became the organization’s Technical Director in 2012 before transitioning to his most recent role as Director, High Performance.

Canada Soccer would like to thank Tony for his years of service and for his professionalism and commitment to the development of the game in Canada.

This is weird. The announcement falls between CONCACAF U-20 men’s World Cup qualifying, where Canada did horribly, and U-17 qualifying in a few weeks. Fonseca enjoyed overall responsibility for the men’s youth setup and coached both teams in the past. The Gold Cup is also this summer. Canada is currently searching for a senior men’s head coach, and it’s possible that Fonseca’s being pushed out to make room for a candidate who will want all the keys to the castle, such as John Herdman enjoys on the women’s side. But there’s been no announcement of a coach, no reports of anyone notable, no sightings of Luis Enrique at Ottawa airport or anything. Moreover, after all these years as a good soldier it would be striking to sack Fonseca so perfunctorily, without the figleaf of resignation or reassignment, to make room for a coach.

By no means was Fonseca unanimously loved. More than a decade of prominent roles in the Canadian men’s game coincided with mixed results at all levels, and as the longest-serving technical staffer Fonseca drew automatic heat. That said, his record as a professional coach in this country before joining the CSA was good, he’s always been on hand for thankless jobs, from chipping in at camps to helping with the futsal team, and steady promotions in a high-turnover field suggest he was well-thought of. Though much sport was made of his transforming three senior caps for Portugal into a whole career at Canada Soccer, the man did the work and until the moment he was sacked there was never any suggestion he’d become disposable.

The boys’ results have been poor for a few years but, frankly, that’s seldom a firing offense in Canada. The routine is for a contract to quietly expire and for fans to learn about it when the old boss is replaced with the new boss. A talented women’s U-20 team had an appalling World Cup last November and head coach Danny Worthington took much of the rap. To this day, Worthington’s fate has not been formally announced, but when the women’s youth department was juggled in January Worthington was absent, and program director Bev Priestman led a U-20 identification camp in January.

Fonseca’s predecessor as technical director was Stephen Hart, who changed roles to become the men’s head coach; his predecessor was Richard Bate, who drew a very pleasant press release despite resigning only ten months into his appointment.

When senior men’s head coach Benito Floro’s contract was not renewed last September, he received a relatively-lavish send-off that included quotes from Floro and CSA president Victor Montagliani. The previous coach, Hart, another long-term CSA servant, also got a dignified “resignation” announcement and Montagliani’s thanks. Dale Mitchell, perhaps the least popular coach among players and fans the Canadian men ever had, was tersely “released” like Fonseca in 2009, but again then-president Dr. Dominic Maestracci put his name an explicit quote about a new direction and, unlike Fonseca, Mitchell’s canning had been in the wind for weeks. Former women’s boss Carolina Morace, the ugliest departure of note after the ugliest tenure in the CSA’s recent history, abruptly resigned in a cascade of sour grapes and while there is no announcement on CanadaSoccer.com about it, they didn’t exactly bury it either.

Fonseca’s departure looks more like authority stuck its head into the CSA’s press office and said “Tony’s been canned, put out a release” than a deliberate, long-contemplated and decisively-executed action. This is so out-of-the-ordinary that speculation can’t help but swirl. From outside, unless there was some serious misdemeanour that hasn’t yet seen the light of day, it looks like Fonseca may have fallen victim to politics. Former men’s national team captain Jason deVos was named director of development in September, with a remit that overlapped many of the traditional activities of a technical director. Simple intraoffice friction may have culminated in this explosion, and it may even be for the best. But in the absence of knowledge all we can do is raise our eyebrows at how odd this is, and guess.

The Canadian Soccer Association has again been fined 20,000 Swiss francs (about CDN$27,000) for “insulting chants by supporters.” This fine, their third of the past World Cup cycle, came at Canada’s 3-1 win over El Salvador on September 6. One earlier fine was for pyrotechnics, the other for the infamous streaker and more “insulting chants,” and we also got a warning for the team coming out late for the second half at Honduras – Canada. Which is fair enough since it did.

67. Liability for spectator conduct

The home association or home club is liable for improper conduct among spectators, regardless of the question of culpable conduct or culpable oversight, and, depending on the situation, may be fined. Further sanctions may be imposed in the case of serious disturbances.

The visiting association or visiting club is liable for improper conduct among its own group of spectators, regardless of the question of culpable conduct or culpable oversight, and, depending on the situation, may be fined. Further sanctions may be imposed in the case of serious disturbances. Supporters occupying the away sector of a stadium are regarded as the visiting association’s supporters, unless proven to the contrary.

Improper conduct includes violence towards persons or objects, letting off incendiary devices, throwing missiles, displaying insulting or political slogans in any form, uttering insulting words or sounds, or invading the pitch.

The liability described in par. 1 and 2 also includes matches played on neutral ground, especially during final competitions.

So visiting fans are probably innocent. The phrase “insulting chants by supporters” implies repetition and organization, which in turn implies that it couldn’t have been Salvadoran agents provocateurs scattered through the crowd.

Last year’s pyrotechnics charge against Belize was a fair cop. That did happen, in the Canadian supporters section at BMO Field. Of course responsible pyro should be allowed in soccer stadiums, but whatever may actually be just, in that case supporters undeniably broke a clear rule. An apology would be disingenuous since it’ll probably happen again, but we can take responsibility. “Insulting chants,” though? How do you even respond to that? That could be anything.

FIFA does not say what the insulting chants were and nowhere defines the term beyond its plain English meaning. According to Duane Rollins, the Canadian Soccer Association has not replied to requests for clarification. The Voyageurs, Canada’s semi-demi-hemi-official supporters group, have no idea what they might have done. I don’t mean that in the sense of a guy going “it’s a football match innit it’s just some banter” when he’s upset someone. We genuinely don’t know. My truculence and rudeness are not typical of a Vancouver crowd, which is for the most part mild-mannered and at pains to avoid anything that might hint at offense.

During the Mexico game, some Voyageurs brought in rainbow flags to protest a Mexican chant that offended them and there was serious support for an organized campaign. A dozen people chanting “build a wall and make them pay for it” for a few bars when we were getting stomped caused serious internal recriminations. And while there are drunken louts in any big crowd, “insulting chants by supporters” must mean more than some university idiot fifteen beers deep bellowing “go home you spic.” Otherwise every country with liquor sales would get fined. Vancouver supporters aren’t saints, but they are less outspoken than most within Canada, let alone the whole soccer world.

Local supporters believe the “insulting chants” were the traditional Vancouver shouting of “you fat bastard” when the opposing keeper takes a goal kick. This chant, dating back way into the USL days, has gotten the Vancouver Southsiders some limited heat from Major League Soccer over the years without affecting its popularity. There are no more obvious candidates so its guilt has been sort of assumed. But there’s nothing official or semi-official, no leak, no unnamed source, saying so. Vancouver fans shouted “you fat bastard” at the Honduran goalkeeper last year and nobody was fined.

Section 67 is so broad that the only way to avoid it is to stay silent. “Football mafia, CONCACAF!” is a popular chant whenever a call goes against us; that sounds pretty insulting. Any of the many variants of chants accusing players of being diving weenies qualify. “Uttering insulting [. . .] sounds” is sanctionable; did we boo anybody during those games? FIFA’s refusal to explain exactly what the fine was for only makes them look more arbitrary, and the CSA staying mum suggests they don’t want to bother even asking the supporters to change. (We should, incidentally, appreciate the hell out of that.)

No doubt FIFA is trying to stomp out something it, or a member association, finds offensive. The fact that there is nothing to be offended by in the average Canadian eye is irrelevant. We are being judged by standards not our own, and the unsurpassable effrontery of FIFA technocrats thinking they of all people can be our moral tutors chafes like steel underwear. The fact that outsiders are taking our kids’ registration fees to enforce their cultural values and dictate what’s offensive in a Canadian culture they do not understand is appalling, but that’s modern international soccer, isn’t it?

For some time the Canadian Soccer Association has semi-openly been trying to start a national soccer league, in cooperation with the Canadian Football League. So far it’s only amounted to rumour and ambition, but Duane Rollins reports that an announcement is virtually imminent[1]. Dark histories and hard-won cynicism keep fans from daring to hope, but if you’re not excited by the prospect you have no soul.

A domestic Canadian league will face monumental obstacles that may be overcome by the right investors. CFL support means access to stadiums and potential media coverage with CTV/TSN, who did a masterful job at the Women’s World Cup. It also (currently) means operators with a bit of cash and experience rather than fly-by-night confidence men. But there are a lot of problems left.

For casual fans, Canada’s three largest cities are monopolized by Major League Soccer, who may not welcome and will certainly not join a Canadian league set up in response to their inadequacies. Edmonton and Ottawa’s NASL teams would not necessarily take part either. As of the beginning of June neither the Ottawa Fury nor FC Edmonton had even been invited to discussions[2], and with Eddies owner Tom Fath invested heavily in the NASL the only reason for him to jump would be patriotic fervour. These two leagues, both playing at a higher level in the medium-term, would compete for fan interest with any Canadian league. Without huge investment or cunning marketing the new organization would be branded super-minor-league by non-fans, below even the American second division. These are risks worth running, for a national Canadian league is an absolute necessity, yet they are risks all the same.

There is, however, a way to ensure that the Canadian national league would not merely be the top league in the country but one of the top leagues in the world. It would fill a niche left open by MLS and NASL, and possibly encourage those leagues to see the newcomer as a partner rather than a competitor. It would not jeopardize the Voyageurs Cup, nor our CONCACAF Champions League success, nor anything else that the five existing professional teams have helped build. It would appeal to fans untouched by Soccer United Marketing and allow die-hard MLS supporters to develop a second allegiance without compromising their first. Furthermore, it would provide direct help to the Canadian national program immediately: rather than wait a decade for academies and opportunities to increase the level of play, we would see players cracking the senior national team at once. It would even lower costs. And it would capitalize on Canada’s strengths, which saw record-breaking crowds for the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

The magic solution? Make it a women’s league.

Canadians support women’s soccer. We have held three serious women’s competitions in 2002, 2014, and 2015, and enjoyed world-class support at each. Germany is traditionally accounted the world’s strongest women’s soccer nation with several top club teams, but Canada 2015 saw higher average attendances than Germany 2011 throughout the knockout stages[3]. When Canada played England in the quarter-final an average of 3.2 million Canadians watched on television, with an average of 2.3 million throughout the group stage[4]: better than some UEFA Champions League finals. TV viewership was even higher for the 2012 Olympics, where the match against the United States ranked behind only the men’s 100 metres[5].

Would Canadians come out for professional women’s clubs? It’s hard to tell, because there has never been a professional women’s soccer club in Canadian history. This is a strength of a sort, because any league would come untarnished by past failures. It’s also a scathing indictment of how we’ve chased the men’s game altogether too single-mindedly. The fact that the likes of Christine Sinclair and Erin McLeod are obliged to go to the United States to make a living should be a national scandal, let alone the diamonds-in-the-rough who have to leave the game early or, if they’re very lucky, pull an Allysha Chapman and find a club overseas.

There is reason to hope. The late Vancouver Whitecaps W-League team, despite being an amateur club and an afterthought to the men’s program, several times achieved attendances that would rank well in the men’s USL[6]. Other W-League teams in Victoria, Quebec City, Toronto, and Ottawa also drew decent numbers for amateur soccer. However, in recent years many of these teams have been shut down in an era of fast-increasing budgets for men’s team and reduced regional women’s competition. The potential for women’s pro soccer exists, but not even an attempt has been made to exploit it.

How about finance? Travel and marketing costs don’t change because you swap men for women, but player payroll plunges. As of 2012, CSA guidelines specified the minimum budget for a fully professional men’s team of $1.5 million with a player payroll of $500,000; the Easton report of that year estimated the actual figures required as $4.2 million with $900,000 on players. Rollins’s report ups the figures to a $3 million budget and a $1 to $1.5 million salary cap. However, a women’s team wouldn’t need to come near this: the NWSL salary cap for 2015 is US$265,000[7]. This doesn’t count the marquee allocated players, but that’s money the Canadian Soccer Association is spending anyway: thirteen players currently sent to the NWSL that could easily be sent to Canada instead.

Canada could pay salaries competitive with the world’s best women’s soccer leagues for less than the cost of keeping pace with USL. You want first-class soccer? The opportunity is in front of us, waiting to be grasped.

Yes, it’s a gamble, an idealistic dream that will succeed only with luck, dedication, and patience. That’s no less true of a men’s league. It’s true of everything worth doing that might improve our position in the viciously competitive soccer world. Women have a unique opportunity here, for the female game is still taken seriously only by a minority of soccer powers and Canada retains an important position. That advantage will not last; is already diminishing. Let us exploit it while we may.

Very early indeed this morning, your friend and mine Michael McColl published over at AFTN Canada a post explaining his opinion that MLS has no obligations to Canadian soccer[1]. As someone whose opinion notoriously runs the other way, I have been called out to reply. I will oblige.

I do not mean to address McColl’s preference for club over country; that’s personal. (And he’s Scottish so, y’know, he’s responding to the incentives he’s got.) What I’m discussing is his argument that the Canadian MLS teams have no responsibility, and should have no responsibility, to develop Canadian talent.

These sorts of arguments always come down to two things: GIT DAT MONEY and WIN DOZE GAMEZ. Weird things for supporters to say. We all want our team to win, obviously, but that’s clearly not the most important thing: if it was we’d all cheer for Bayern Münich. We certainly wouldn’t be fans of the MLS Vancouver Whitecaps, a team proud of barely finishing in the top half twice in four years. There’s got to be something beyond numbers on a spreadsheet that keeps us coming to the park week in, week out. This is, in fact, the point.

And then there’s the financial argument. “Did Canada put any money into the MLS teams?!” Well, as it happens, yeah[2]. These self-sacrificing MLS team owners who only want to turn a wee little profit have by no means paid their own way. In terms of dollars and cents the Canadian public has bought a right to demand something from our MLS clubs. But it doesn’t matter.

If professional clubs are meant to be just another company then there’s no reason for them to ever have a single fan. You don’t see people going around wearing Telus shirts saying “yeah, they’ve been my phone company since I was a kid.” Even I don’t do that, and my dad works for Telus. In Vancouver you more commonly get people protesting corporations they feel put profit ahead of community. The entire business model of professional sports requires that we devote ourselves to an idea higher than any corporate interest: as fans we are entitled to demand something in exchange.

Why should we, as fans, give a hoot about franchise fees? We’re not shareholders in the Montreal Impact or the Vancouver Whitecaps. (You might be an investor in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment I guess.) I have no objection to Canadian soccer teams making money; in fact, I hope they do. But I’m not going to ignore everything that should turn a mere franchise into my club so Joey Saputo can have more caviar in his luxury suite.

Of course, nobody wants Canada’s professional teams to go broke. Look at the Whitecaps of the mid-2000s: playing Canadians for 20,000 minutes a season they won league championships[3]. Pretty sure they went utterly bankrupt. Pretty sure that’s what happened. If they routinely sold out Swangard Stadium, had a captain from Vancouver Island, and a bevy of beloved, successful local players, somebody would have mentioned it.

Or the Montreal Impact of that era. Routinely in the top of the table, the “least Canadian team in domestic professional soccer” which would make them the most Canadian team in MLS by miles, a bunch of long-term players and the occasional native son on a star turn like Ali Gerba. I seem to recall that they wound up building a soccer-specific stadium, won a dozen Voyageurs Cups, and got deep in a CONCACAF Champions League while drawing formidable crowds… but that’s probably a pot-induced hallucination. Next you’ll tell me that even the Toronto Lynx, who were an advertisement for how not to run a professional soccer team, are still around in USL PDL. Everyone knows that playing Canadians makes you broke. That’s why, when a long-forgotten MLS franchise named Toronto FC was founded with a high Canadian quota in place and they lost most of their games, the team plunged into obscurity and team owner Mr. MLSE can now be found outside Union Station giving handies for pocket change.

But isn’t it true that the biggest soccer nations in the world don’t do this sort of navel-gazing? Look, as McColl urges us, at the foreigner-replete Spanish La Liga, English Premier League, and Italian Serie A! They don’t demand a proportion of Spanish or English or Italian players and they’re doing great! (This amounts to saying “these countries are in the European Union”; it is difficult legally to rule out European foreigners in these countries. La Liga restricts non-EU players but can’t restrict non-Spaniards.)

These are three of the strongest leagues in the world: not exactly comparable to a podunk salary-capped regional league. Besides, as McColl ought to have known, England is plagued by just this problem, despite domestic representation that would make a Canadian jump for joy: the Football Association’s tightening work permit rules are one attempt at a solution[4]. And what of Germany? The world’s top soccer league requires a high proportion of homegrown players on a team’s roster, and their football association sets strict standards and demands heavy investment in youth academies[5]. The Germans, I shouldn’t need to tell you, have enjoyed some success with this approach.

In Australia, a country comparable to Canada in many ways, the A-League restricts teams to a maximum of five imports, a number that’s actually going down[6]. The result? The A-League has ten teams, nine in Australia proper (population 24 million), international television coverage, and a fast-rising salary cap. Their national team has moved to the tougher Asian region for more of a challenge and A-League-developed players like Mitchell Langerak, Joshua Brillante, and Robbie Kruse have joined some of the world’s top teams. If only we had Australia’s problems. Nor is their approach unusual: leagues in Russia, Japan, South Korea, and other strong countries have adopted increasingly strict pro-domestic rules.

Yeah, the men’s national team only plays a few times a year (and never in Vancouver). Yeah, it’s incompetent. Yeah, over the years the Canadian Soccer Association hasn’t been able to find its ass with a 15-page PDF titled “Roadmap to Canada’s Ass 2025”. That’s not the point. The Canadian national teams don’t represent the CSA, they represent us, the people of Canada. They are eleven men or women who unify us from Victoria to St. John’s. They are the apex of what we can hope to achieve: five MLS Cups in Vancouver wouldn’t add up to the world-wide attention and the domestic hope from a single Canadian World Cup appearance.

Telling us our MLS teams should ignore that so they can make more money is an offense to the entire concept of supporting a club.

Earlier this week on The 24th Minute Duane Rollins reported that the Canadian Soccer Association has set high domestic player quotas for the three reserve teams that Canada’s Major League Soccer franchises are entering into USL Pro. Half of the active team roster, as well as six of eleven starters, will have to be players eligible for the Canadian national team[1].

With the ostensible reason for these USL Pro teams being the young Canadian talent our MLS franchises have failed to integrate into the first team, you’d expect the MLS sides to accept this without a complaint. And, so far, they pretty much have. (Score one for the bright side of life!) Vancouver is still pushing the New Westminster scheme hard, the Montreal Impact just announced their own USL Pro team[2], and Toronto FC seems to be moving forward with their plans[3]. Obviously the franchises knew this was coming. It’s enough to almost make you believe the life of a Canadian soccer fan isn’t uniformly terrible.

Naturally some fans of MLS organizations aren’t as calm as the organizations themselves. The comments of Rollins’ post are filled with the usual. I look at my Twitter feed and this is being framed in “club versus country” terms like every other discussion that combines the words “Canadian” and “soccer”. It’s gotten a shade repetitive, and long ago became the sort of argument that ceased to persuade anyone ever.

How often have you heard the club-first people scoff “well, why doesn’t the Canadian Soccer Association do something to make the men’s national team relevant, anyway?” with the “pssh” and the “pfft” of the supporter dismissing Canada in favour of the accomplished winners that are our MLS teams. Well, the Canadian Soccer Association has done something! “Okay,” they’ve said “you guys want to put yet more teams in yet another American league and you’re saying you’re going to develop Canadian talent, then we’re going to hold you to that.”

When the Vancouver Whitecaps and the Montreal Impact joined Toronto FC in Major League Soccer, the CSA made a mistake that’s set Canadian soccer back years: it trusted the MLS group. The Whitecaps had given Canadian players over 10,000 minutes every season in the USL First Division, Montreal was behind but still not bad, and Toronto FC was making all the right noises. Bob Lenarduzzi wanted no quota at all, saying the Whitecaps should produce enough quality players to make one irrelevant[4], so the CSA compromised with an extremely low requirement for three domestic players, including Canadian citizens ineligible for our national team.

As a result the number of Canadians playing professional soccer in their home country has declined precipitously[5]. Whatever the intentions of Toronto FC or Vancouver or Montreal, in the real world they’ve found it easier to draft American NCAA players and sign imports for a season and a half rather than buck the MLS model and build around Canadian talent. With young players not able to get anywhere in Canada, and potentially talented veterans leaving the professional game in despair so they can raise families and play for Edmonton Scottish, the Canadian men’s national team has never been worse.

We know that hopes and aspirations aren’t good enough when you’re dealing with MLS, so the CSA is forcing them to do the right thing. It’s a pity that it’s necessary, but we’ve seen that it is. Clearly the people with the money, the Vancouverites and Montrealers and Torontonians, don’t think this is a deal-breaker (I mean, half these reserve teams can still be foreign; that’s more than enough for all your NCAA scrubs). And the fans who don’t care about developing Canadian players will whine, but let them: these are literally the last people on Earth the Canadian Soccer Association should answer to.

FIFA’s intervention into the Québec Soccer Federation turban debate on June 13th[1] was a welcome reprieve, allowing Québec Sikhs to return from their backyard exile and back to the soccer pitch. I had cynically expected FIFA to do nothing and see the matter resolved until it went to the courts, whether through the parties aggrieved the QSF or the Canadian Soccer Association. Thankfully, that did not happen.

It was striking how favourable FIFA’s release was to the QSF; they could have hardly had a more favourable release if they wrote themselves.

The one issue FIFA’s release did not address was the QSF’s concerns about the safety of turbans on the soccer pitch. Of course, this turgid kerfuffle was never about safety in the first place. The QSF failed to present any evidence corroborating their safety concerns. Furthermore, the Québec Soccer Federation hasn’t exactly been quick to act when other safety concerns are raised, even in the case when there has been a death[2].

What is in FIFA’s release is as interesting as what is missing. Notice that the release makes no reference to the Canadian Soccer Association’s directive in March extending the approval of the wearing of headscarves to the wearing of turbans[3]. Rather than explicitly (and retroactively) affirming the CSA’s decision, FIFA’s release reads like a new, development only reached after the QSF acted out.

That is why the ruling is great for the QSF. Not only did they manage to perform an end-run around the Canadian Soccer Association and get away with it, the end-run and the turban ban can be justified because they caused change. With the QSF reinstated in what appears to be a return to the status quo ante[4]. I believe we will see the QSF emboldened by the outcome and their insubordination.

When he wrote about the turban ban, Duane Rollins pointed out that the ban in the realm of soccer was as much about a reaction to recent CSA reform as anything else[5]. FIFA’s intervention makes the CSA look weak.

This probably will not be the last time the Québec Soccer Federation tries to assert itself in an attempt at independence and given that they faced few consequences (other than outrage outside of Québec), I do not see them being reluctant to do so in the future. I hope that the next time they do so their actions won’t be seeded with bigotry.

The Canadian Soccer Association has announced that the much-anticipated home return of the Canadian women’s national team will be held at BMO Field[1]. Huh. Who would have guessed?

There was a time when I ranted angrily about the Canadian Soccer Association sticking it to 90% of Canada at every opportunity. But this has become too much business-as-usual for me to feel the old rage. It’s just exasperation, now; a few hundred words of “Jesus Christ, this is stupid”. A national facepalm.

Eleven of the eighteen home games by any senior Canadian national team since 2010 men’s World Cup qualifying have been at BMO Field[2]; five of the seven exceptions were CONCACAF Women’s Olympic Qualifiers held in January 2012 when playing at BMO was impossible (remember that Toronto was unable to play a CONCACAF Champions League match at BMO as late as March[3]). The only two occasions since 2008 when the Canadian Soccer Association played outside of BMO Field by choice were the men on September 7, 2010 in Montreal against Honduras and the women on May 30, 2012 in Moncton against China.

Small wonder. In January, Duane Rollins of The 24th Minute reported that the Canadian Soccer Association signed contracts in 2005 and 2011 which encouraged the CSA to playing as many games as possible at BMO Field[4]. This at least provided an explanation beyond sheer bloody-mindedness for the CSA’s “heads Toronto wins, tails Canada loses” mentality: the way there was always some excuse, differing every game, for why BMO Field was really the only place Canada could possibly play.

Not that this stopped Peter Montopoli from telling Daniel Squizzato how the Americans “preferred an east-coast environment this time around” and how “when it came down to that decision, you’re looking at the opportunity and the availability” and that “we like to play in Toronto” (you don’t say)[5]. Toronto isn’t actually on the east coast, it’s hard to imagine why BMO Field is perfect whereas Stade Saputo, a 2015 Women’s World Cup host venue, is unsuitable (the Impact play on the road the day before), and why are we working our national soccer strategy around making the Americans as comfortable as possible anyway? They’re a poor choice of opponent, as John Herdman will be unable to keep up his semi-rebuild-for-2015 strategy against them, and the last time we played a women’s friendly against the Americans our ladies traveled to Sandy, Utah, which is a damned sight more “out there” than Edmonton.

At least the past 24 hours have again shown why Vancouver Whitecaps fans shouldn’t worry about how many Canadians the ‘Caps run out. We may all like cheering for locals, but I’m referring to those who think the Whitecaps’ failure to use affirmative action to prop up the rotten Canadian structure is some sort of moral failing. Those mad dogs first got to see our U-20 national team humiliated by Cuba (Cuba!!!) 2-1, a deserved Cuban win in spite of a national hype engine saying this was our strongest team in ages because MLS ACADEMEEZ. Now the CSA is once again reminding us that those of us outside Toronto barely exist when it comes time to make decisions. Making an argument that the Whitecaps should sign provably-inferior players for the satisfaction of fans at BMO Field looks even stupider than usual today.

So yeah, nothing has changed and there’s no reason to believe anything ever will. Do you see why I can’t keep up the proper, incandescent rage that’s so much fun to read? After four years of this it gets sort of hard to do more than mock and sigh. Mammas, don’t let your babies grow up to be Canadian soccer supporters.